“From LA, With Love” Daniel Boone’s great-great-great-great-grandson, Pat Boone, keeps leading me into new territory. How else to explain my journey from tiny Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to massive LAX? The plane lands in eternally sunny, … Continue reading From the desk of Sue William Silverman
C. Richard King is Professor of Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author and editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy and Unsettling America: Indianness in the Contemporary World.
On June 18, 2014, The U.S. Trademark and Patent Office Trademark Trial Appeal Board (TTAB) voided trademarks associated with Washington, DC NFL franchise, because it found the team’s name, Redskins, to be “disparaging.” The ruling, which followed precedent established by TTAB over the past two decades that had dismissed a range of trademark applications using the name, predictably was met with adulation by opponents and outrage by supporters. In fact, the decision lit up social media, spawning #newredskinnames, which dominated trending topics for much of the day. Focusing on the celebratory tones, raging resentment, and partisan politics palpable in immediate reactions, we might easily lose the larger import of the decision, while overlooking its limitations and dangers.
It is best not to think of the ruling as an end point. It rather moves the struggle to the next phase, fostering reconfigured dialogues and debate, while opening new fronts for action and reaction. Indeed, neither the name nor the brand will cease, and even if appeals uphold the decision, the franchise will retain rights, if more limited and less profitable. The organization said as much the same in its press release: “We’ve seen this story before. And just like last time, today’s ruling will have no effect at all on the team’s ownership of and right to use the Redskins name and logo” (emphasis original). This is certainly not the end. Nevertheless, the finding is a hopeful sign, or better said, another positive development for those opposed to the name. It adds to growing political pressure and the increasingly audible voices of dissent. In other words, the fight will continue with increased visibility and heightened momentum.
Much of the coverage, but happily not all, has centered on the ruling by TTAB and its propriety, the impact on and reaction of the franchise, and the minutiae of intellectual property law. The media has disappeared American Indians again, often burying, if not altogether erasing, them. Many readers will not learn the identities and actions of the five Native American plaintiffs, Amanda Blackhorse, Marcus Briggs-Cloud, Philip Gover, Jillian Pappan, and Courtney Tsotigh, who courageously brought the case to TTAB, nor will be given a fuller understanding of the long history of opposition to the team and its name, an opposition that dates back more than four decades and its in a larger pattern of empowerment. Indeed, as important as this ruling is, it is not the first time TTAB has taken up the question. In fact, it comes more than two decades after Suzan Harjo, Raymond D. Apodaca, Vine Deloria, Jr., Norbert S. Hill, Jr. Mateo Romero, William A. Means, and Manley A. Begay, Jr. filled suit against the NFL, seeking to nullify associated trademarks. Then, as now, TTAB ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
It already seems a long time ago, but the annual book industry melee that is BookExpo America recently came and went. BEA drew its usual crowd of industry insiders, booksellers, librarians, media, and many others, plus about eight thousand members of the paying public. Publishers took booth space in varying degrees of pomposity, striving to outdo each other’s displays so that those few key people at the show (the buyers and the media) took notice of everyone’s latest attempts to reach the top of the best seller charts. In the build up to the show, during its course, and now, a week or so later, I’ve been pondering how BEA and university presses interact–or perhaps, should interact. Having completed my eighth BEA, I should be a part of the jaded, cynical crowd that complains about the hassle of reaching the Javits Center each day (and leaving at the end of the day, which is quite truly a much worse task), the expense of being in New York for a week, the lack of book buyers placing orders any more, the downtrodden, woebegone publishing industry, and so on. But I don’t feel that way. Instead, I am invigorated each year by the sight of people worming their way through overcrowded walkways between publishers of all sizes and ilk. It is a fascinating mix of people and books, and I love it.
UNP has exhibited at BEA for many years, one of the few university presses that might claim diehard status in this regard. Gone are the oft-discussed glory years when university presses hogged whole sections in the Javits Center, when “University Press Row” was actually a row and not just a block. There were seventeen university presses exhibiting this year. UNP and the University Press of New England were the only two UPs who took a double booth, but fifteen others ranged in size from the University of Hawaii Press to Yale and Harvard. All UPs in attendance were waving their university press flags high and proud. But why? What purpose does exhibiting at BEA serve? The popular publishing cynicism that I noted earlier is not simply, truth be told, not only cynical, it is, surely, based on the quite real statistical measures that publishers can apply to exhibiting: book buyers don’t attend in the numbers they used to and they certainly don’t place on-the-floor orders in the quantity they used to. Of course, part of the lack of orders and buyers can be attributed to the decline in independent bookstores, but even those few stores don’t send their staff to BEA in the numbers they used to. So why do we still bother?
Continue reading “Doc Martyn’s Soul: BEA and University Presses”
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